Pathfinder: Kingmaker

[Dharus]

Actually I went back to an old save and looked at Valarie. Fighters do get more AC than monks by a fair margin.

I have level 4 Valarie at 29 AC with nothing extremely special gear-wise. +1 full plate, +1 tower shield, +1 from amulet, ring and bracer. AC is 29/27/13.

My level 5 monk is 22/17/21 with 20 wis and 20 dex, +1 ring and bracers (hat and belt are wis and dex items, amulet is +unarmed damage so I could get 1 more AC there if I used the same gear as Valarie).

Seems like more of a tradeoff. Valarie's damage is crap while the monk is a DPSer but Valarie has 7 more AC which is quite a lot and I could spring for the adamantine armor still.

A tower shielder's specialty isn't DPS though... it is straight tanking.  You also need to mind stacking.  A +1 natural armor doesn't stack on a +2 natural armor.  Only the +2 counts.  The same is with rings of protection and defection bonuses.  I remember dodge bonuses stack from 3.5 but I'm not sure about in pathfinder.  Also Bracers that add AC rarely stack with armored people.

I got well and good into Act 3 but the summoning just didn't cut it in my book.  It did well in some cases but not in others.  By Act 3, I was burning spells so fast per fight it wasn't sustainable.  Part of it was my party makeup though as I was really light in DPS.